BARCLAYS has more than doubled the shares it holds in Israeli weapons manufacture Elbit Systems in two years, peace and anti-poverty groups reveal today.
A joint report by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and War on Want says the high street bank now has £2.7 million invested in the arms firm.
Published today in the run-up to the Barclays AGM in Glasgow on Thursday, the report also says that the bank now holds over £2 billion in shares in nine companies selling arms to Israel that it uses against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories and provides £6.1bn in loans and underwriting to those firms.
Elbit supplies the Israeli military with armoured drones, munitions and artillery weapons that have been employed in attacks in Gaza, it said.
Barclays also has over £100 million invested in General Dynamics, which provides gun systems for the fighter aircraft used by Israel to bombard Gaza, the report says, accusing the bank of “facilitating Israel’s war crimes and grave violations of Palestinian rights.”
The campaign groups urge Barclays to “take the immediate actions … including ending all investment and provision of financial services to arms companies whose equipment has been used by Israel to carry out unlawful attacks on Palestinians.”
PSC director Ben Jamal said: “Barclays is bankrolling Israel’s assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It is shamefully profiting from and complicit in a genocide.
“Rather than heeding voices of conscience, which include thousands of former customers, it seeks to make more money from the misery, pain and death of Palestinians.
“We call on everyone to join our campaign — to close their accounts with Barclays, pledge never to bank there until they end their complicity and picket branches across the UK.”
War on Want executive director Asad Rehman added: “Barclays is synonymous with apartheid for having shamefully propped up and profited from systemised racial discrimination in South Africa and it does the same with Israel, bankrolling systematic, militarised discriminatory violence against Palestinians.
“Not content with that, Barclays now drives forward — and profits from — genocidal violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. We salute the public for stepping up for justice when the UK’s political leaders, alongside Barclays’ top bosses, are complicit in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
The bank has said that it does not invest its own money in companies supplying weapons used by Israel in Gaza but trades in shares in listed companies for its clients.
